Kelly Park worked steadily as a professional
musician in the Boston scene during his enrollment at the Berklee
College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. He performed and recorded
with the likes of Michael Gibbs, Phil Wilson, and Randy Sabien.
During the summers, in between school years, he taught and worked
as a drummer at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Ohio, and taught
jazz percussion at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan. He received
the "Mercer Ellington Jazz Masters Award" from the
Berklee College of Music in 1981 as the drummer most "in
demand" at the Berklee Performance Center.

After college, Kelly went abroad for a year - living primarily
in Denmark. He met and played with then-expatriate Thad Jones,
who became a major musical influence on him. One of his good
friends and former band mate in Scandinavia is Ola Bengtsson,
professor at the Stockholm Conservatory
of Music.

When Kelly returned to the San Francisco Bay Area from
Europe, he was hired as an instructor at the Berklee College
of Music in Boston. He taught harmony, theory, arranging and
ear training. After two years, he decided that teaching was not
for him. He took a sabbatical, from which he never returned,
to play on cruise ships in the Caribbean. After a year of cruise
ships, he returned to dry land and went back to work for Blue
Lake Fine Arts Camp. The Camp sent Kelly overseas again to teach
in southern Germany. He also traveled around Europe as The Camp’s
recruiter.

In 1985, after many years away, Kelly decided to return to the San
Francisco Bay Area and began establishing himself
as a local musician. He worked in almost every major and minor
venue in the San Francisco Bay Area for the
next twenty-four years until the present day. His list of San
Francisco venues include: the Fillmore, the Great American
Music Hall, the Herbst Theater, the Castro Theater, the Luther
Burbank Center, the Lesher Theater, and the Moscone Center.

Kelly has performed with Thad Jones, Keely Smith, Zakiya Hooker,
Michael Manring, Kim Nalley among many others. He’s flown
around the country to be Musical Director for singers such as
Shawn Ryan and Russ Lorenson, and also is the "House Musical
Director" for the THE RRAZZ ROOM, THE
PREMIERE NIGHTCLUB OF SAN FRANCISCO. He recently was Musical Director for the Joan
Rivers Show in San Francisco. Kelly’s performances have
taken him all over the United States, as well as in Denmark,
Sweden, Germany, Mexico, Tunisia, Canada, and England.